Genres Rediscovered. Studies in Latin Miniature Epic, Love Elegy, and Epigram of the Romano-Barbaric Age - Anna Maria Wasyl

A reader of the epyllion by Dracontius, the elegy by Maximianus, and the epigram by Luxorius should not expect that these works – and these new embodiments of the ‘old’ genres – will be wholly identical with their ‘archetypes’. Were it so, it would mean that we read but second-rate versifiers, indeed. … We may expect rather that thanks to the reading of Dracontius’s epyllion, Maximianus’s elegy, and Luxorius’s epigram our understanding of these very genres may become fuller and deeper than if it was narrowed only to the study of the ‘classical phase’ of the Roman literature.